After Apple confirmed earlier this week that some iPad Pros are shipping bent and said that this is not a defect, a company executive has shed a bit more light on the matter.
Dan Riccio, Apple's SVP of Hardware Engineering, has responded to some iPad Pro owners who emailed Apple about the bent tablet issue. In an email obtained by MacRumors, Riccio says that the iPad Pro's unibody design "meets or exceeds all of Apple's high quality standards of design and precision manufacturing," adding that the device has been carefully engineered and that the manufacturing process is "precisely measured and controlled."
He goes on to explained that Apple's specification for iPad Pro flatness is up to 400 microns, which is tighter than previous generations. "This 400 micron variance is less than half a millimeter (or the width of fewer than four sheets of paper at most) and this level of flatness won't change during normal use over the lifetime of the product," Riccio says. He then says that "slight variations" don't affect the function of the iPad Pro in any way.
Apple previously said that the bend on some iPad Pros is the result of a cooling process that involves the tablet's metal and plastic parts during its construction. While Apple does claim that bent iPad Pros shouldn't get any worse over time and that the bend won't affect the iPad's performance, it's understandable that some people would be upset that their expensive new tablet could be bent out of the box. It's nice to get some more info on the matter from Riccio, but we're guessing that this explanation probably isn't going to make anyone feel better about bent iPad Pros if they were upset about it before.
If you bought an iPad Pro that was bent out of the box, would you live with it?
